


Making Things Clear

by kiichandesu



Series: How to Train Your Shapeshifting Dragon [1]
Category: How to Train Your Dragon (Movies)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Exposition, Fluff, Gen, Human Toothless (How to Train Your Dragon), In which dragons can shapeshift into humanoid creatures, Language Barrier, Lore Change, Missing Moments, Movie 1: How To Train Your Dragon (2010), Set during "See You Tomorrow" and "Not so Fireproof", Shapeshifting, Toothless is a Smart Dragon, a bit - Freeform, he's more human than anthro but it's a mix really, i guess, they're just cute and I love them bye
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-03-22
Updated: 2018-03-22
Packaged: 2019-04-06 15:32:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,166
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14059995
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiichandesu/pseuds/kiichandesu
Summary: As their bond is forming, Toothless trusts Hiccup with a pretty big secret in order to clarify some things.—When Hiccup finally snapped out of his thoughts, the dragon’s pupils were slightly slit, focused on him and in particular on the saddle he was still holding.“Help... how?” he asked, flicking his tail around.Hiccup flinched a little, remembering what he was holding and what he had said beforethishappened and his whole world got turned on its head for the second time in less than a couple of weeks.





	Making Things Clear

**Author's Note:**

> (shows up to the fandom eight years late) 'Sup, I have an AU and I don't know if this has been done before. Hopefully not.  
> There's really no improving canon Hictooth, but I wanted my boys to talk. It might have gone a little overboard from there.

Hiccup wasn’t sure how this was going to go.

He had build a prosthesis for the Night Fury’s tail, and he had managed to get on it (him?). Of course, as demonstrated immediately afterwards, the poor thing wouldn’t be able to open and close the fake fin, made of leather and metal rather than muscle and nerves as it should be, and thus wouldn’t be able to fly anyway.

_Well, maybe I can open and close it for him (it?)._ That had been his first thought... and so he made a couple adjustments to the tail and, most importantly, built a saddle.

Now... how in Thor’s name was he going to put it on _him_? (Yeah, he liked ‘him’ better.) 

The tail, sure, that had been quick and relatively easy, but he wasn’t all that certain that the dragon trusted him well enough for this yet. For him to attach something this big to his body. For Hiccup to _ride_ him.

But, well… he hadn’t built it to _not_ try it.

—

Two things happened. Rather, one thing didn’t happen, and one did.

First of all, the Night Fury didn’t shoot him with fire, or bite his head off, or even so much as roar or snarl at him. If he had to be honest, Hiccup hadn’t really expected him to do any of those things. It might have been crazy of him, but he trusted the dragon not to hurt him.

He did, though, run away from the boy as soon as he presented the saddle to him. No matter how fast Hiccup moved to try and catch him, the dragon was always quicker, which was to be expected.

The creature sprinted around the clearing, jumping for side to side, flicking his tail wildly. It looked frantic, though not scared, per se. He was just acting like any animal would when being presented to something uknown and maybe a little too intrusive.

Hiccup grew tired of running around pretty quickly, but he wasn't going to give up; he did, however, have stop in his tracks to give his poor lungs a break. He took as deep of a breath as he could, ready to resume the chase, but when he looked ahead again he was met with a puzzling, if somewhat endearing sight.

The Night Fury had stopped as well, and was now perched on a rock. His eyes, wide and curious, where fixated on Hiccup, though his posture revealed he was ready to sprint away again.

The boy took a tentative step forwards. The dragon did the same backwards. They both froze in place.

“Please,” Hiccup said, a little exasperated, “I just want to help.”

The dragon kept staring at him, then he blinked, slowly, his head tilted. He was likely pondering what to do next. To be fair, he had been pulling that expression a lot since the two of them had met.

“Please?” the boy urged again, gesturing to the saddle in his hands. He was fully prepared to keep pursuing the dragon. He _knew_ this could work if he just got him to cooperate.

But the dragon didn’t run.

On the contrary, while a moment ago he had looked as light as a feather, about to jump back again, he was now settled in place, his whole body weight resting on the rock. Hiccup felt his body relax as well, his back straightening and his feet feeling heavier.

He raised an eyebrow at the Night Fury. Was he going to let him put the saddle on?

He tried to take another step towards him, but as soon as he did, the dragon spread his wings above his head, a wide and clear message to stay back.

Hiccup obliged, not out of fright, or even intimidation really, but rather out of respect, sort of. (Gods, if his father could hear him! Respect. For a _dragon_.)

He kept his full attention on the creature, who roared loudly at the sky, and dug his claws at the rock, steading himself as well as he could. His wings, still spread behind him, came down to embrace him, hide his figure away from Hiccup’s eyes.

The boy could only look in amazement and wonder as the roar faded, and the dragon... grew smaller.

The wings kept folding around the creature, more and more as the seconds passed. Then, in a movement sudden enough to make the viking gasp, they opened again, as the dragon let out a satisfied growl.

Or at least... Hiccup _thought_ that was the dragon.

In front of his green eyes, wide in shock, what looked like a boy maybe around his age sat on the rock, perched on it on all fours, similarly to how the dragon had been.

He had a round face and soft cheekbones, his nose was upturned and his general physique had a definite human shape. Aside from that, though, he could not be described as human-looking in the least.

His skin was coloured dark grey, like no human skin could ever be. Black spots, wide and shaped like scales, with even a slight shine to them where the sun hit them, covered his face like freckles, around his cheeks and on his nose, and a good portion of his shoulders, upper arms and chest.

His upper body, lean and well-toned, was completely exposed, and probably so was his bottom half, but thick, black scales covered it completely, from the spot where his navel should have been to the tip of his toes. The same type of skin covered his forearms and his hands, and he had sharp, black claws.

He had tousled, shaggy black hair, long enough to cover his ears, if only his ears had been human; instead, the black, tree-parted appendages pocked out of the hair from both sides of his head.  

The hair itself was odd: though it _looked_ like hair, it had the same shine to it that the scales on his face and body had; so did his eyebrows, thin and black as well. A stray lock of hair fell right between his eyes; those looked exactly as they did prior to his transformation, wide and round in a way that appeared alien on a human face, with vivid green scleras and wide, black pupils.

Lastly, the first and most glaring evidence of the boy’s true nature, two big, bat shaped wings were growing from his back, still as big as they were prior to the change – looking at him closely, his whole body was _big_ ; his head, for example, was maybe half a size bigger than any human boy’s would be – and, coming from behind him to encircle him, was a long, black tailfin, half of which was obviously man-made. Hiccup-made, to be precise.

Hiccup took a step back in shock and stared, his mouth hanging open, because what else could he do?

The two of them stayed immobile for a good number of seconds. The dragon ( _the dragon?!_ ) blinked again, staring back, seemingly waiting patiently for Hiccup to finish his obvious scrutiny, or maybe just get over the scare.

After a while, he apparently decided that enough time had been wasted, because he roared again. Roared. In that human-shaped body of his. _How_ , Hiccup’s head was screaming, along with other extremely frantic questions of the sort, like _what_ , _why_ , _when_ , and again, _what?!_

And then, then the dragon-human did something else equally, if not more mindblowing: he made a sound that was distinctly not animal. Not a roar, not a growl, a _noise_ of any sort, but something that sounded an awful lot like... words.

Not words that Hiccup understood, mind you. As the boy, who he still had an hard time believing was a transformed Night Fury ( _O, Gods_ ), kept making that sound and many others, the viking quickly realized he was speaking (Gods, _speaking_ ) a language he had never heard before.

“Whoah, whoah, stop—” he found the voice to say, wavering as his tone was. The creature immediately went silent, his gaze caught by the hand Hiccup had instinctively raised. “I can’t—I don’t understand you.”

He watched as the creature straightened, blinking twice as if realizing just now the way he’d been talking.

Hiccup couldn’t stop staring. He couldn’t even find it in himself to close his eyes, afraid one blink might reveal this to be just a dream, nothing more an hallucination. His mind was racing even faster than it was when he had first seen the dragon up close, tied up in his bolas in the middle of the woods.

This was— this was—

“I’m... sorry.” _Thor Almighty._

The brown haired boy watched in awe as the scaled boy frowned around the badly pronounced apology, pursing his lips as if saying it or perhaps remembering which word to use had been difficult for him.

“Do you—” he took a breath, “Do you understand _me_?”

The dragon’s – he should really pick a name for him, or find out if he had one, he didn’t think he’d ever heard the word ‘dragon’ as many times as he had thought it these past few days – frown hardened, again not out of hostility but because of the struggle of talking properly.

“A... little.”

“Do you, uh, _know_ my language?”

He looked absolutely lost at that. Hiccup groaned: he was going to take that as a no.

“Um. My... words?” he explained, touching his fingers together to mimic a mouth opening and closing.

The dragon seemed to understand, but shook his head. “Just... from... you.”

Hiccup took a moment to process that information. The dragon had seemed to understand him well enough, or at least somewhat, up until this point, ever since he had first found him in the woods. But most communication had been, well, non-verbal.

The boy couldn’t remember how many sentences he’d spoken to the Night Fury, probably not enough for anyone to pick up the language in any shape or form; he figured the creature had the basic, rough understanding of it that animals usually had after being frequently talked to or trained by humans.

This was more than that, though. Despite the obvious difficulty and awful pronounciation of the words, it was clear that the dragon had learned much more than any normal animal would have.

Then again, he had also just transformed into a half-human half-dragon looking creature like Hiccup had never seen in his life, not in fairytales nor myths nor his wildest dreams, so really, who was he to decide what was normal and what wasn’t?

Though, if his vocabulary was this limited, he might not be able to answer any of the millions of questions Hiccup had about the past ten minutes of their lives. Maybe, if he could teach him more...

The dragon stayed silent as Hiccup thought about all this, respecting his need to think. He himself was looking at the viking curiously and, perhaps without noticing himself, leaned towards him from his higher ground on the rock. If he had been less graceful, he might’ve lost balance and fallen flat on his face; as it was, though, he simply stretched his back a bit, studying Hiccup with his eyes.

When Hiccup finally snapped out of his thoughts, the dragon’s pupils were slightly slit, focused on him and in particular on the saddle he was still holding.

“Help... how?” he asked, flicking his tail around.

Hiccup flinched a little, remembering what he was holding and what he had said before _this_ happened and his whole world got turned on its head for the second time in less than a couple of weeks.

“Well, I—” he looked down at the saddle, “If I can get on you, then I can— I can manage your tail for you.”

The dragon cocked his eyebrows, confusion in his gaze and in the curve of his dark lips.

“...Tail?” Hiccup said, and the dragon lifted his tailfin from the ground in response, showcasing his understanding. “Right. Open and close?” The dragon demonstrated his words again, expanding the part of his fin that he had still control over. The boy smiled a little. He was lucky that this dragon was as smart as it was. “I,” he said, pointing at himself, “can do that.”

Every muscle in the dragon’s body tensed, his eyes suddenly wide and hyperaware, even more than they were before.

“You... can?”

Hiccup’s smile grew wider. “Yes.”

The dragon suddenly jumped, leaving the rock and landing gracefully on all fours, and under Hiccup’s eyes, shielding himself only partly with his wings, changed his shape once more.

He grew taller and wider, the scales on his skin spread to cover all of it, while his hair pulled itself back until it became fins on his back. His nose and mouth grew wider on his face, and while the proportions of his body were changing so drastically, Hiccup could do nothing but stare, confused and amazed and absolutely hypnotized by the display.

He would need days to even begin to believe his eyes.

He didn’t have much time to do so now because, the moment he was done shapeshifting, the dragon bumped his muzzle eagerly to the boy’s hands. When Hiccup looked down at him, his eyes were wide and hopeful and, honestly, incredibly endearing.

Hiccup looked at the Night Fury – _hide and prey it does not find you_ , the Book of Dragons said – and felt his shock and bewilderment and his mountain of questions subside and leave space to excitement and hope and an incredible desire to put the saddle on and help this dragon fly again.

“Alright, bud,” he said, barely even noticing the word as he said it, “Let’s see if this works.”

—

It didn’t _not_ work. It just needed... adjustements. Hiccup wasn’t discouraged in the least: he would build whatever he needed into this saddle to make the Night Fury fly, no matter how long it took him.

He promised so to the dragon, and he was confident he would succeed. He had never felt this confident about anything before; it was nice. Really nice.

He spent his days working on the contraption, steadily improving it over time. Well, most mornings he spent in the arena for dragon training, but whenever he didn’t have to be there – which he still wished could be always, but he learned to settle – he was either in the workshop or in the woods, building and testing and modifying and testing again.

He half-expected the Night Fury to grow impatient with the failed attempts, but the creature was smart enough to realize things like this took time, and rather than annoyance and contempt, something else seemed to be forming between them. Hiccup would dare to call it trust.

In the meantime, as the days went by, because of the time he spent with the dragon, Hiccup found himself learning so much more about his whole species than Gobber and his Book of Dragons could ever _dream_ of being able to teach him.

Most things he discovered, he could later use in the arena to prevent any actual fighting the poor animals from happening (the fear of eels, the ‘dragon nip’, soft spots, etcetera), but some he could not; namely, the shapeshifting.

The Night Fury didn’t shift often, but he did it enough times during their acquaintance to let Hiccup learn a couple of things or two. Though he still struggled with the language, what with pronunciation and actual talking being much harder than simply understanding it was, the dragon was a quick learner, and pretty soon he was able to teach Hiccup at least _some_ things about this incredible ability.

After a few weeks, Hiccup had learned the following facts about the shapeshifting of dragons:

First off, all dragons could do it, though they didn’t do it often, and especially not in the presence of other dragons: the humanoid form was weaker, more vulnerable, and usually came in handy only for hiding or sometimes hunting purposes. The Fury described his own language as ‘putting roars into words’, but hadn’t been able to elaborate; apparently, all dragons could do that, too. Lastly, he was not able to _design_ his humanoid appearance, just had to deal with what he got.

Despite the scarce and somewhat incomplete answers to his questions, Hiccup was fascinated with all of it, just like he was with everything else he learned about dragons thanks to Toothless.

...They had agreed on that name a couple of days after their first (failed) attempt at flying together.

“Do you have a name?” Hiccup had asked the Night Fury as he was taking the saddle off of him to make a couple more adjustments.

The dragon was currently in his humanoid form to make himself smaller, so as to let the saddle slide off him easier; the question made him turn a confused frown to the viking.

“Na...me?” he repeated, an eyebrow raised.

“Yeah, like,” said Hiccup, then rested his palm on his own chest, gesturing to himself, “Hiccup. That’s my name. It’s me. What people call me.”

The dragon processed the definition for a moment, then nodded in understanding.

“So... do you?”

A shake of the head.

Hiccup must’ve made a face, because the dragon decided to explain. “Don’t... need. Peo...ple don’t... call.”

Which was fair enough, considering he didn’t _know_ ‘people’. Just Hiccup.

The boy shrugged. “I do.”

“Oh.” the dragon said, picking idly at his teeth. He never retracted them in this form, since he needed them for speaking, but he seemed uncomfortable with them most of the time. “Then, ‘Bud’?”

“Bud’s not a name!” Hiccup chuckled, though it was, in fact, what he called the dragon most of the time. “Your name is unique to you.”

“I... don’t. Have.” the Night Fury replied, growing mildly exasperated with the boy’s insistance.

Hiccup wasn’t going to let that deter him. He looked at the other for a moment, and then—

“What do you think of ‘Toothless’?”

That gave the dragon pause.

“Tooth...less?”

You could read it in his eyes— he remembered. It was the first real word Hiccup had spoken to the dragon after he’d freed him from the bolas he had trapped him in. It wasn’t a word you would hear everyday, but the dragon knew exactly what it meant; that was just the thing.

“Yeah.” The boy shrugged again. “I think it suits you.”

The Night Fury didn’t say anything for a while. He looked ahead, lost in his thoughts, his tail moving gently around them.

Then, he smiled. “...Toothless.”

Hiccup smiled back.

—

They did it. They _flew_.

Even the almost-burns that Toothless’ celebrating blast had caused to Hiccup’s face hadn’t managed to dumper his mood.

He flew. In the sky. On a _dragon_.

He could still feel the mixture of exhilaration and mild terror he had felt up there. It was... incredible.

Leaning with his back against the Night Fury’s body in the small clearing they had stopped in to eat, the young viking watched as a small pack of Terrible Terrors landed near them, attracted by the fish they were eating.

He didn’t interfere when Toothless shot one of them to protect his food, since it was clear any harm caused wouldn’t be permanent, and let himself be amused by the thought of the small dragon not being as fireproof on the inside as it was on the outside.

He offered the Terror some of his own fish, and observed in wonder as it ate and came lying next to him, nuzzling his thigh and letting itself be pet, purring softly.

“Everything we know about you is... wrong.” Hiccup finally voiced what he’d been thinking for a while now, his eyes fixated on the small, greenish creature, who seemed to be completely relaxed.

At the same time, he felt the creature he was leaning on tensing up behind him.

He slid away as far as he could to give Toothless the space he required to shift, bemused by the dragon’s sudden decision to do it. He watched carefully as the transformation took place; even after seeing it a few times prior to this, it was still a marvel.

Toothless didn’t look at him once he was done changing. He grabbed one fish with his newly transformed hand, and ate it whole. He made slow work of it, so much that it almost lead Hiccup to wonder why he’d shifted to begin with.

He gulped down the fish, and then finally opened his mouth. Then, he closed it again.

He did so twice more, brows furrowing in concentration. He did that sometimes when he struggled with formulating sentences in his head beforehe spoke them, but this time it felt somewhat different.

Hiccup hesitated. “...I’m listening.” he said, crossing his legs to sit properly and give the Fury his undivided attention. The Terrible Terror flew off the ground and landed on the boy’s shoulder, resting its small head in the crook of his neck.

It was adorable and mildly distracting.

Toothless took a breath and, having apparently settled on what words to use, he said, “You did this.”

The sentence struck Hiccup as odd. Not surprising, since Toothless rarely gave context to his thoughts if it wasn’t asked of him, but his tone, resolute and firm, was slightly jarring, considering the good mood they’d both been in just a moment ago. Not to mention, it was rare of him to pronounce something so clearly, and without hesitation.

He’d been thinking about this.

“What?” the viking cautiously asked.

The dragon lifted his serious and unquestioning gaze off his lunch – though still making sure to cover it a bit with his wing, lest any of the Terrors try and sneak some of it away again – and looked at Hiccup, who felt a wave of not intimidation, but surely something akin to it, rush down his spine.

“You did this,” Toothless repeated, lifting his tail from the dirt and flicking it slowly into the boy’s field of vision. “All of it.”

It came out as a soft question, a request to confirm rather than a serious doubt, and Hiccup’s stomach dropped.

He hadn’t realized the matter needed clarification at all. Even now, looking at Toothless’ steady gaze, he could see that knowledge, that weeks-old realization staring right at him.

_You fixed my tail._

_But you also broke it._

“I— ” was anything but comfortable with this. He didn’t know why he’d bring it up right now, or why he’d need a confirmation to begin with. But if Toothless needed clarification, he deserved it. And if Hiccup had been able to own up to his mistake to at least himself, he could own up to it to its victim, too.

He took a breath. “Yeah. I, I did.”

The dragon stayed silent. He simply stared, his expression neutral, relaxed even. He blinked slowly, his pupils remaining wide and gentle even after receiving the answer.

After a further stretch of silence, “I see,” he said, and returned to his lunch as if nothing had happened.

It was Hiccup’s turn to blink, looking at the Fury in confusion.

“...You didn’t know?” he gathered up his courage to ask.

Toothless shook his head as he chewed on a salmon. “Just… want… make sure.” he answered with his mouth full.

To Hiccup’s great relief and deepening confusion, he didn’t look angry or upset at all.

He decided it was fine to pry a little more. “Why _now_?”

The dragon seemed to think about it for a moment, looking up at the sky as he chewed some more.

“Was… mad. Before.”

“Not… now?” Hiccup insisted, fully raising an eyebrow. He looked down at his own fish that he’d roasted on the fire shortly before the Terrors had arrived. It had probably gone cold by now, but whatever.

“No.” Toothless said without hesitation, maybe even shrugging a little bit. He turned to the boy once more, and the corners of his lips bent upwards just a smidge when he added, matter of factly, “You... fixed it.”

Hiccup chuckled nervously. “I, ah, I guess.” He pursed his lips, then looked up at the Fury from under his eyelashes, the uncovered guilt still eating at his stomach. “I’m sorry.” And he meant it. So much.

Toothless nodded gently. “I know.”

The viking let himself smile back. “Thank you.”

“...mh.”

They held their gaze for a moment more, then the dragon broke eye contact to focus on his food once again. Now that he was done talking, he gobbled down the fish with amazing speed.

Hiccup waited to make sure he was truly over with his lunch, and then, a gleam in his eyes, he said,

“You want to go again?”

Toothless smiled widely and skipped any useless verbal answers, shifting back immediately and nudging the boy eagerly as soon as he was fully animal again.

Hiccup chuckled, this time without a trace of nervousness in it.

He would dare to call it friendship.

**Author's Note:**

> I should really stop publishing things right after I finish them, but impatience always gets the best of my anxiety owo  
> Thanks for reading this to the end! I hope you enjoyed that, because I love this concept so much.  
> I can't decide whether there's too much exposition, not enough of it, or just the right amount, so I'll just let you do the deciding.  
> Please do tell me if you've noticed something amiss grammar/vocabulary/generally English-wise, because I'm not a native English speaker, and sometimes I miss things while checking.  
>  ~~I really got to find myself a beta~~


End file.
